You know, I have always had a dislike for the collectible business. Most children of the 70's and 80's probably do, as we were generally left crying because our Transformers or Star Wars collections were incomplete. My own bitterness arises from not being able to get a figure of April O'Neill, the redheaded reporter and best friend of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That was the first time I learned that adults collected these things -- and not to play with, but to sell for ridiculously high prices. And I learned it courtesy of my dad, who knew guys hoarding April O'Neill figures, and who wouldn't cough one up to a fellow cop for his young, geeky daughter.
So, this story from the New York Post reporting Heath Ledger's Joker figure selling out everywhere makes me sad and angry. It's not that kids are being denied a Joker figure (I really do not think young children should be anywhere near The Dark Knight, and I'm pretty liberal about kids watching dark movies), but that Ledger's death is being shamelessly exploited on eBay. Because you know as well as I that those figures wouldn't be flying from the shelves if Ledger hadn't passed away earlier this year. I have no doubt it would be popular, but no one would be buying 30 of them. They wouldn't be going for $55.00 a pop. (Actually, it looks like that's some hyperbole, as a brief glance suggests it's more in the range of $30-$40, but it's still the principle of the thing. Sell enough and you've turned a tidy profit.)
Ever since Marvel announced release dates for a slew of new comic book-related films yesterday, the internets have come alive with scoopers. We were a bit burned on the last rumor Cinema Blend reported, so take all three of these with a huge grain of salt.
Captain America: According to CB, Matthew McConaughey is the first name to hit the possible cast list. The film, now titled The First Avenger: Captain America, has been given a release date of May 6, 2011, and so I wouldn't expect a name to sign on for awhile. That's not to say there isn't a wish list floating around -- and, if one did exist, I imagine McConaughey's name would be on it, along with several others. I'm sure fans already hate the idea of seeing Mr. Rom Com himself show up as their beloved Captain America, but I actually think it's a good choice -- an interesting choice -- and one I'd definitely support. With the right script, he'd bring the looks, the muscle and the charisma. (Actually, I could kinda see him playing Thor, too.)
Iron Man 2: Yes, work will begin on this monster right away as a release date of April 30, 2010 is already in place, giving Jon Favreau and his team two years to get what will soon become the world's most highly-anticipated sequel in the can. But what will it be about? Well, CB claims that one of the plot lines being considered involves Sam Jackson returning as Nick Fury in order to team up with Stark to go after a terrorist called The Mandarin (featured prominently in the comic books as one of Iron Man's greatest villains). They also claim Marvel may throw a Thor cameo into the sequel to further tie The Avengers thing together, and also because Thor will debut his own film a couple of months later on July 4, 2010.
Above: Aaron Eckhart as the villain Two Face in a very brief appearance during the latest trailer for The Dark Knight.
Fresh on the heels of the new trailer comes a Los Angeles Times interview with Aaron Eckhart. Possible spoilers abound -- in fact, I think there is a fairly huge one in there that I cannot believe slipped by. And people rag on us for being spoil sports! So, in order to preserve your innocence (I'm upset that mine is now gone), I shall copy the best quotes here.
Eckhart addressed the fact that the world has not been given a glimpse of his scarred district attorney, and promised that whatever fans have cooked up in their brains is nothing like what we're going to see. "That's right, people don't really know yet. I can tell you that, basically, when you look at Two-Face, you should get sick to your stomach. Being the guy under all that, well, that was a lot of fun for me. It's like you would feel if you met someone whose face had pretty much been ripped off or burned off with acid. I can't talk about it beyond that because I don't want to give away too much of the plans by Chris. There are fans on the Internet who have done artist's versions of what they think it will look like, and I can tell you this: They're thinking small; Chris is going way farther than people think."
Finally, the wait is over! The second full length trailer for The Dark Knightis up and it is all kinds of cool. Unlike the feeling left by the two Incredible Hulk trailers, I feel like there's plenty of scary Joker goodness waiting for me in the theatre.
Maybe it was the long wait, maybe it's just that there's a point of excitement one reaches, but this trailer seems kind of ... understated? I don't want to say flat, because it is anything but -- yet compared to the explosions and shrill laughter of the first, this one suddenly brought Batman back into the real world. When the bootleg was leaked, my e-mail box was flooded with people complaining that Ledger was too "gritty" and "realistic" in his performance. I don't share the complaints, but the Joker is definitely missing the eerie, superhuman element. I like it, but I can see why many might not.
Love the foreshadowing surrounding poor Harvey Dent. I'm already half in love with the handsome D.A.; I can't wait to see how Nolan handles his fall from grace. Watch it, and rave about it. Or complain. I think this might be the trailer that divides an audience -- I'm watching the comments to see! The Dark Knight hits theatres July 18th.
In these supposedly progressive times, gender equality is one of those touchy issues relegated to the last paragraph of a trend piece nobody reads. When Katherine Heigl suggested to Vanity Fairthat Judd Apatow's movies were sexist, the assertion came across like an after-the-fact shrug of acceptance. Ever the galvanizing provocateur, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis confronts the issue head-on with a thorough analysis of the gender bias in this year's summer blockbusters.
With "Iron Man, Batman, Big Angry Green Man" and other massive expressions of virility invading the box office, female roles appear to be relegated to the back of the multiplex. Dargis touches on the rumors that Warner Bros head Jeff Robinov believes no woman has been able to sell a movie since Julia Roberts (a point that Natalie Portman might contest, but not Paris Hilton) before sizing up numerous upcoming studio releases, with particular attention paid to Anna Faris, "who could be the next Judy Holliday but without the right material will, alas, probably end up the next Brittany Murphy." It's the kind of pronouncement that hits you in gut.
An alternate version of the new trailer for The Dark Knighthas been whispered about online for two days now, but I hadn't seen a decent bootleg version with my very own eyes. At last, one was put up on YouTube -- check it out above. As you probably remember, during that (patently unfair) viral campaign that saw about three hundred lucky fans invited to theatres all over the planet, from Seattle to London, one lucky fan in each group got a film reel of the trailer to keep. Everyone assumed it was just a standard copy of the thing.
Wrong. It turns out this version has been edited by the Joker -- lots of black-eyed smiley faces and "HA HAs." I haven't watched the whole thing because, again, I want to see the new trailer relatively unspoilt, but it is pretty funny. Especially the JUMP! he scrawls next to Batman.
It's good to see the Joker running around the Internet again; I'm going to miss the crazy guy come July 18th. It's been fun. I rather wish they would release this trailer into theatres, though, if only to gauge the audience reaction! And why stop there -- as a final gag, the Joker ought to mess around with all those midnight showing reels.
We wanted a trailer, not another poster! Oh well. It is the new banner advertisement for The Dark Knight -- and drat the shape, I had to shrink it ridiculously small to fit our width. You can see a full-sized one over here, courtesy of JoBlo.
Batman is just on a path of destruction in the poster art -- flaming buildings, shattered windows. The geek in me is wondering if this poster is actually a prequel to this one -- and that's how he made the flaming bat. I know, I really should get out more.
Sunday will be here before we know it. We'll have something new to talk about other than posters and complaining that we didn't make it to a Joker drop fast enough.
The Joker launched his latest viral campaign -- and to be honest, I think it was a little lackluster. Nothing has approached the Internet-wide madness of the bowling ball hunt, and Jim Gordon didn't see fit to contact many of us for the next one.
Probably the most disappointing aspect of it was that despite the online community participating wholeheartedly, none of us got the trailer payoff. Roughly 300 people in the targeted cities were invited into movie theatres to watch the trailer on the big screen. The rest of us have to wait until Sunday, when it will premiere online.
I guess this is what comes of throwing our admiration behind a villain. He never looks out for you in the end! Maybe I'll sell him out to Jim Gordon after all!
At least you all have something to mark on your calenders this weekend. Inevitably though, a bootleg has appeared online. It is bad quality and may be gone by the time you read this, but it's available here. I'm not embedding it because Warner Bros will inevitably ask us to take it down, and I want to see this in the official Quicktime quality. Don't you?
Are any of you super-fans? I'm talking about the type of fanatic who will buy every single thing associated with a beloved franchise or movie -- from toys to posters -- plus any video store or movie theater paraphernalia that can be scored. If you are, what do you do if you love Christopher Nolan's take on Batman? More specifically, what happens if you run out of wall space? Do you keep them on rotation?* More posters for The Dark Knight have popped up online, over at Omelet.com, and you can check out one of them above.
I'm really digging these obscured-face posters (although not so much the action shots). They're eerie and simple, yet they say so much -- especially with the inclusion of Harvey Dent. It alludes to this whole Two-Face scenario, as well as the way each man chooses to fight -- with games, with weapons, and with politics. I just wish we didn't have to wait so long to see it! Yes, when we've been anxiously awaiting the dark world of Batman, and Heath Ledger's last complete performance, July 18 is too far away.
*And what do you do when the next movie you love comes out? Do you ever have retro months where everything from one movie comes out of storage?
This impressive-looking new (final?) poster for The Dark Knight recently appeared on the film's fun viral website, WhySoSerious.com. If nothing else, it has to be the most intimidating piece of advertising we've seen for a modern comic book movie. God bless Christopher Nolan for refusing to make anything about this franchise remotely cartoonish. How the hell Batman actually imprinted the flaming bat signal onto that skyscraper, I'm dying to know.
The website also contains a note reading "Four Days," which presumably means that one more trailer will appear on Monday, April 28th. (At least, that's what the folks at ComingSoon.net speculate, and I tend to agree.) If I didn't feel duty-bound to watch it, I probably wouldn't: this is one of the few summer flicks I'm dying to see unspoiled. Nolan makes movies, not frivolous money-making throwaways, and I think The Dark Knight will be no exception.
My favorite piece of Dark Knight artwork, by the way, remains this international poster (the first one, not the second), which was my desktop background for quite a while. It really seems to capture the essence of these new movies.
Dang it! You sit online all week digging up stories for your Cinematical readers and the Sunday you duck offline to take your pug to the dog park, Harvey Dent holds a press conference.
It seems Gotham's D.A. hopeful was supposed to hold a press conference on Sunday at 3pm. Those who were able to get on Dent's website discovered that the press conference had been pre-empted by a hostage crisis. Lawyer Joseph Candoloro Frank Nataro (who was apparently sending e-mails and voice mails giving hints as to what he was up to) took a girl hostage at a coffee shop. Dent ended up breaking into the coffee shop, negotiating with Nataro, and rescuing the girl. What a guy.
Edward sent us a run down of the whole thing that was posted on EyeCraveDVD's forums. Thanks, Edward! And if you'd like to hear the audio of the entire event, it's up via Dent's official site.
Imagine if The Dark Knight or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull initially opened in limited release, and then took a month or so to reach you in "flyover country." But on the same day that they hit those first theaters in New York and L.A., they were also available on your television, via Video on Demand. Would you wait a few weeks to see the blockbusters on the big screen or would you lack the patience and go ahead and download the movies to your cable box? Of course you would choose the VOD route. I probably would, as well.
Despite this column, I cannot claim to be a purist when it comes to theatrical film exhibition. I subscribe to Netflix and even sometimes watch old movies on the Watch Now streaming player. I now own a video iPod, and while I haven't yet tried watching a feature, I have had no problem watching shorts and television episodes on its small screen and am not totally against eventually downloading a whole movie from iTunes. And although New York's Film Forum is currently showing a ton of United Artists classics, many of which I've never seen at all and a number of which I've never seen on the big screen, I haven't been able to make my way to Manhattan to appreciate the retrospective.
Unlike The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Heath Ledger completed his scenes for The Dark Knight before his shocking death. But one of the first questions to pop up in the aftermath was how this would affect the film -- could viewers stomach his portrayal in the same way? It's impossible to eradicate thoughts of his death from the mind as the news continues to grow and audiences finally break through the doors to see for themselves.
However, according to Cinema Blend, there have already been screenings, and they've presented problems for the dark and sure-to-be-awesome film. One scene in particular has been bothering audiences to the point that it might be completely removed from the film.
Hit the jump to find out more, but move on if you want no details about the brief scene.
I'm not entirely too sure where this video came from (I believe a few links popped up in the SHH forums), but it's up on YouTube now, so we're all good. Check out the first video of Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes above, as she speaks out to members of the Gotham City press on why she feels everyone should support Harvey Dent (as played by Aaron Eckhart in the sequel). Gyllenhaal, as most of us already know, took over for Katie Holmes after the actress decided not to return for The Dark Knight. It's not much, and this doesn't look to be part of the film (though maybe it will show up on a TV screen in the background somewhere), but those who were curious to see Gyllenhaal in action can finally do so now.
Personally, at this point I'm dying to see a Harvey Dent political commercial. I want children asleep in their beds, and a calm voiceover to say something like, "It's 3am in Gotham City, and the phone rings. Who do you want answering that call? Batman? No ... how about District Attorney Harvey Dent." Check out the video above, and let us know what you think of Maggie Gyllenhaal in this role? I've always had a thing for this gal, so I dig her in just about anything. You?
Is Paramount poised to have the best May imaginable at the box office between Mr. Stark and Dr. Jones? Can you take any movie with a monkey in it seriously? Will Pixar succeed again with WALL-E, or are robots the new Cars? Is a long-awaited sequel 'too little, too late' for X-Files fans? And will Hellboy 2 be the surprise smash of the season? Joining us this week on The Rocchi Review to talk summer's biggest movies is Scott Weinberg of Cinematical and FEARnet, and we try to answer all those questions and more. ... Cinematical's podcast content now has even better sound quality, and is now in iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:
As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.
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In these supposedly progressive times, gender equality is one of those touchy issues relegated to the last paragraph of a trend piece nobody reads. When 
The Joker launched his latest viral campaign -- and to be honest, I think it was a little lackluster. Nothing has approached the Internet-wide madness of the bowling ball hunt, and Jim Gordon didn't see fit to contact many of us for the next one.
Dang it! You sit online all week digging up stories for your Cinematical readers and the Sunday you duck offline to take your pug to the dog park, Harvey Dent holds a press conference.
Unlike The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, 
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Cinematical Seven: When an Animated Series Goes Live Action ... and Gets it Right_thumbnail.jpg)
Full 'G.I. Joe' Cast Photos!
